"On the Other Hand…"
A Sunday Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Thomas C. Leinbach
April 6, 2008 - Harwich, Massachusetts

Preaching Text: "[But] while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds amongst he wheat, and then went away." (Matthew 13:25)

Last week we talked about doubt and how it's a natural and necessary part of faith. Doubt is, in some sense, the means by which faith seeks to understand itself. Said differently, it is the human attempt to understand something not naturally understandable to humans: the strange and mysterious ways of God.

Fred Buechner once argued that of the three great Christian virtues, faith, hope and love, the greatest, the one we need most today, is hope. Because, he said, it's in short supply. In our scientific, rationalistic, materialistic world, we have been reduced to small, more "realistic" hopes. The great hopes of the gospel, he said, seem more the product of a bygone era, when the sacred seemed truer, more plausible.

Different eras, in other words, often require different emphases.

So while recognizing doubt as a legitimate part of faith (rather than its opposite) is important to any age, it may be less so today, when doubt has been elevated almost to a virtue, the highest good to which even religion can aspire.

On the first anniversary of 9/11, PBS broadcast a documentary entitled Faith and Doubt from the Rubble. The scenes and images shown in the documentary were very moving, showing with sensitivity and poignancy the horrific, tragic and senseless loss of so much innocent life.

Mainly, though, as the title implies, the program sought to answer the question many of us have asked ourselves since: how could an all-powerful, all-loving God allow such things to happen? Where was God in all this unmitigated evil?

By the end of the film, after interviewing a number of religious observers from various faith traditions, the conclusion seemed incontrovertible. Doubt, not faith, is the only intelligent, viable response to the heartbreak of tragedy. The value of traditional theological reflection was deemed insufficient, displaced in favor of a less defined, more mystical set of questions (rather than answers).

The conclusion was that in light of such events, the Bible, for one, simply has no answers, or none that are the least reliable. No, in the face of such suffering, our experience of profound loss and its accompanying sense of meaninglessness and doubt can be the only honest or real response to evil.

I immediately thought of the writings of Elie Wiesel on the salvific power of biblical faith in the midst of a Nazi death camp. And Dietrich Bonhoeffer, whose sharp and confident faith led to extraordinarily selfless acts of courage and sacrifice in the face of Hitler's genocidal madness. In comparison to the thoughts and actions of these giants of the faith standing face-to-face against evil, Faith and Doubt from the Rubble produced a decidedly shallow, hollow ring.

The documentary reminded me once again that our age has no story, no larger framework within which to place evil and suffering. The modern story, the modern narrative, argues that there simply is no story, no context within which to place tragedy. All we have instead is our momentary experiences and subjective feelings. When tragedy strikes, then, we moderns are left without resources; we have no story, no narrative, no framework within which to place experiences of fear and loss.

Unlike, that is, the biblical (story, narrative, framework) which does offer meaning for our suffering, pain and loss. An example is found in this morning's reading from Matthew with some help from Paul's thoughts on the resurrection.

The biblical story, the parable of the 'wheat and the tares,' asserts that God created all things good, as evidenced by the one who sows good seed in his field, the world. But while everybody is asleep, we are told, an enemy, the devil, comes in the cover of darkness to sow weeds among the good seed.

Here the reality of evil in our world is named. But it is not that the world is inherently evil, as life events otherwise might force us to conclude. Rather, evil has been introduced into the mix from beyond.

So when the workers returning from the field report back to the Sower that they have discovered weeds, that they in effect have discovered evil, they naturally seek an explanation from the Sower as to why it is allowed to persist - as do we, for we, too, know it should be otherwise.

The Sower then tells of a time, in the future, at the harvest, when this evil will be judged and rooted out, even as the good grain will be gathered safely into the barn.

It is important to note here that evil, and the suffering it produces, isn't really explained; all we know is that it simply is. Which is very much like the way we actually experience evil in our lives. We don't know exactly where it comes from or why. And we don't really know why it is allowed to exist, either.

Yet we experience it in very real, very personal terms, as if it is being done from beyond us, to us, by some malevolent someone. We know how it leaves us feeling abandoned, with a fearful apprehension that can take our breath away.

But Paul, knowing the significance of Christ's resurrection, itself the culmination of a biblical story that proclaims God's sure and ultimate triumph over evil, says this to the faithful, to those struggling in the field while they await the harvest: "I consider that the sufferings of the present time," he assures, "are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us."

His words echo Jesus, about how evil is both real and how it has subjected an otherwise good creation to futility, "not of its own doing," as Paul puts it, "but by the will of one who subjected it."

Paul then compares our present suffering to labor pains, labor pains that will result ultimately in a new creation. Those of us who have received the Spirit of Christ, who have received the first fruits of this coming harvest, "groan inwardly" as we await its completion with certainty.

Regarding this certainty, Paul utters one of his most famous lines: "For in hope we were saved. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience."

Despite evidence to the contrary, despite our momentary sense of loss and futility, a mature faith waits patiently, knowing the eventual outcome. Into this larger story, larger narrative, larger framework, our personal suffering gains context and meaning. Just as a mother about to give birth accepts her suffering and pain without any real understanding of why it must be so, the faithful trust God to make something of their suffering, for the faithful live in the assurance of this hope.

Part of why we in the church often fail to understand our suffering this way, as Paul does, could be due to something we see in the Book of Proverbs, part of the Old Testament's so-called wisdom literature, which presents life as a series of do's and don'ts. If one does things right, we are told, life will work out splendidly; if not, it won't. If you do a, b & c, you will prosper - in body, mind and spirit. Your barns will be full, you will know abundance and health, and life will be sweet. If, however, you do x, y & z, you can expect the worst. Failure to live a godly, moral life, in other words, will bring upon you poverty, disease and misfortune.

Within this mindset, it was not uncommon for people to see the poor or ill or those who were suffering as immoral and rejected by God. If you were healthy, wealthy and wise, on the other hand, God obviously was quite pleased with you.

In time, though, a counter-voice emerged which challenged these questionable theological assumptions. One such example, as we discussed last week, was the Book of Job, which turned the prevailing assumptions of the day on their head.

Thrust into despair and grief, Job searches but cannot find God, the same God who had heretofore blessed him so richly. In his sorrow he lashes out and demands that God hear him. He wants an explanation and will not rest until he gets it. He talks with his friends, some of whom try to convince him that he surely must have sinned; otherwise God would not have let these things befall him.

But Job refuses such nonsense, for he knows he is blameless and therefore entitled to God's unending security and protection. But, alas, God's silence remains. Job's entire faith life, cultivated and nurtured through persistence, hard work and honest trust is now seemingly shattered and lost forever. Perhaps it was all a lie, this God-business. After all, how could God be God when such bad things happen to the upright and faithful?

But then suddenly God comes to Job, in the midst of a whirlwind, not with specific answers, but with hard speech challenging Job's audacity and impertinence. God reminds Job in no uncertain terms just who God is; that is God who created the world and that it is God who remains in charge of it. It is not for Job to understand it all, for it is far too awesome and wonderful for him to grasp.

Duly chastened, Job re-affirms his trust in the Lord, convinced anew of God's goodness, convinced that God is able to do far more than he, Job, previously had realized or imagined. And as it turns out, at story's end, Job's fortunes are restored.

Now while we might quibble with the manner in which God communicates with Job in this fable, who, after all, it would seem, has every reason to be upset, the intent of the author is clear: that when it comes to suffering, tragedy and loss, no one is spared, not even the upright and faithful, for the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike.

And each of us, deep down, knows this to be so. We know about suffering. While Job learns that belief in God does not always protect him from sorrow or grief, he also learns in the midst of that sorrow and grief that God is both present and at work, even if temporarily experienced as hidden.

In the end, it is not just Job who is wrong. For the Book of Job reveals also just how wrong the devil's wager with God is. For Satan had argued that it is only natural for people to have faith in God as long as life is good. But take that good life away and bring punishing and senseless hardship upon these same faithful, and surely they will fall away.

Satan assumes, in other words, a naïve and fickle faith that believes religion will protect us always from hardship and tragedy; that the faithful will be spared suffering and grief. Yet the kind of faith Job ultimately experiences, a far more mature faith, knows that grief and loss can and do visit us all at some point or another; that none can escape it. Job's newfound faith, in the end, is stronger, more resilient, more trusting. In the end, he emerges more fully alive, as only those who have survived such spiritual crises so often seem to.

But Satan is wrong for yet another reason. Specifically, he misses the whole point of the ancient biblical story which, from beginning to end, tells of how Satan, of how evil, though it might rage and strut for a time, cannot and will not stand. Satan shall reign but for a moment. For the die is cast; Satan has lost.

Bringing things back to the poignant sorrows of our day, it is not that it is wrong to doubt or ask why; but neither is it theologically appropriate, in light of the biblical story of God's victory on the cross, for our ever-shifting and momentary doubts to become the principle and guiding force of our lives, as ends unto themselves, leading to the illogic of bitterness and despair. Job's doubt, in the end, proves a temporary way station along the path to recovery, his doubt serving more as a fervent struggle to understand and to reclaim faith.

Doubt is neither, in other words, the highest nor the last word.

Such a view, I suppose, may appear to minimize the tragic, with its brutalities and horrors. But this is not so. For if innocent suffering and tragedy negate biblical faith and negate what the church throughout the ages has proclaimed, then surely Jesus' death on the cross has no meaning whatsoever.

For the cross makes known concretely our Creator's fateful decision to live sacrificially among us -as one of us - to experience and suffer even our deepest, darkest pains and sorrows, revealing not just the infinite compassion and mercy of the divine, but also the truth of the biblical story most clearly expressed in the resurrection: the total and absolute victory of God over evil and over death, humanity's greatest foes.

Bearing the first fruits of the harvest, we, therefore, wait with patience and certain hope. For just as the resurrection provides the proper context for Jesus' suffering, so, too, is our suffering made both meaningful and intelligible, not in vain, drawing us ever closer to God and ever deeper into the mystery that is faith.

Amen.